From Somnath to Pokhran: When Dharma meets Vigyan

Today, on May 11, 2026, as we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the restoration of the Somnath Temple, we find ourselves standing on a date that is doubly sacred to the Indian identity. May 11, after all, is also celebrated as the National Technology Day in honour of the Pokhran-II tests successfully carried out in 1998, under the leadership of the then Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

For a nation that has survived the trauma of centuries of foreign invasions and the indignity of colonial rule, May 11 is not just another date on the square piece of the calendar. It is the date where ancient Dharma met modern Vigyan (science). It is the day India proved its unconquerable spirit that manifests both at the sacred Somnath Temple on the seashore in Gujarat and in a thunderous roar beneath the desert sands at the Pokhran-II nuclear site in Rajasthan.

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From Ruins to Rise

This story begins a thousand years earlier, in 1026 CE, when the loot and desecration of the Somnath Temple and the Jyotirlinga by Mahmud of Ghazni, an invader from present-day Afghanistan, etched a scar onto the civilisational memory of India. For centuries, that wound “stung like a thorn”, as noted by Vajpayee in one of his reminiscences.

Vajpayee’s own journey offers a telling bridge between these eras. In 1978, as India’s External Affairs Minister, during his official visit to Afghanistan, Vajpayee made a peculiar request to his hosts in Afghanistan: he wanted to visit the village of Ghazni. The hosts were surprised by his request since Ghazni was an insignificant place for them. However, for Vajpayee, his wish was not to visit this place as a tourist but to visit the place from which the invader Ghazni arrived in India to destroy the Somnath Temple. To his astonishment, Ghazni, a name which has scarred the soul of India, was a nondescript, dusty, forgotten town that held no memory of Mahmud of Ghazni in Afghanistan. Yet, for Vajpayee, the memory of Somnath was alive — a reminder that while invaders eventually fade into the dust of history, as does their place of origin, the spirit of India refuses to stay defeated.

The Millennium of Resilience

The thousand years of Somnath’s — and India’s — history of resilience began on the fateful day, January 8, 1026 CE, when Mahmud of Ghazni plundered and desecrated the revered Shivalinga, killing thousands of people and maiming many more, including women, for life. This was a wound intended to be permanent. Yet, as history reveals and research endorses, the spirit of India’s civilisational resilience has endured. Ghazni, the seat of Mahmud of Ghazni, has faded into a footnote in history whose significance even the Afghans were unaware of. But in India, the “scars endure for a lifetime”. Somnath lives not as a memory of conquest, but as an exemplar chapter of the endurance of India and its rich history.

The Somnath Temple was shattered many times, including six major destructions over a thousand years — from the raids of the 11th century by Ghazni to the final obliteration of the temple ordered by Aurangzeb in 1706. Each time, the temple was rebuilt. Whether it was the Chaulukya king Bhimdev I, the Maratha queen Ahilyabai Holkar, or the modern vision of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the “sacred flame” at Somnath was never allowed to be extinguished. This cycle of “Vidhvans” (destruction) and “Srijan” (creation) reached its culmination through the will of Sardar Patel and the scholarly dedication of K.M. Munshi and many others.

1951: The Resurrection of Faith

India’s resilience to combat defeat and destruction reached its natural climax on May 11, 1951. Despite the political hesitations of the time (Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s disapproval, citing fears of “Hindu revivalism”), India’s first President, Dr Rajendra Prasad, consecrated the new temple. He hailed the newly restored and consecrated temple at Somnath as the “Temple of Human Welfare”, declaring that no army or king could break the bond between Indian people and their faith. It was a transformative movement for a self-respecting, independent India — a transition from a “ship-to-mouth” nation dependent on foreign wheat to a civilisation reclaiming its spiritual and cultural soul.

1998: The Roar of Resilience

Fast forward exactly forty-seven years to May 11, 1998. It was Prime Minister Vajpayee who chose this very anniversary of the Somnath consecration to authorise and oversee the Pokhran-II nuclear explosion successfully conducted by Indian scientists, including President, late APJ Abdul Kalam.

By conducting nuclear tests on the same historic day (May 11) that Rajendra Prasad had reinstalled the Jyotirlinga at the restored Somnath Temple, India sent a message to the world: our resilience is not just spiritual; it is strategic. If 1951 was about the restoration of our Virasat (heritage), 1998 was about the assertion of our Shakti (power). On that day, Vajpayee gave us a new clarion call. To the slogan of Lal Bahadur Shastri’s “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan,” he added “Jai Vigyan” (Hail Science). May 11 was officially designated as National Technology Day, marking India’s entry into an elite global league.

2026: The Millennial Perspective

Today, in 2026, as we read Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reflections on these events in some of the leading dailies, the circle is complete. We are no longer the nation of the 1950s and ’60s that waited for PL-480 shiploads of food from the US to feed our people. We are the world’s fourth-largest economy with strategic nuclear power.

Today, we are celebrating 75 years of the Somnath Temple not merely as a religious milestone, but as a victory of “Dharma” — the ethical and cultural continuity that gave us the strength to pass through a millennium of trials and tribulations. The noise of our democracy, the unprecedented diversity of our people, and the prowess of our scientists and the might and determination of our armed forces are all fruits of the same tree that was replanted on the shores of Gujarat in 1951.

From the ruins of 1026 to the restoration of 1951 and the “Jai Vigyan” moment of 1998, India has risen from the dust. As we look at the Dharma-Dhwaja flying at Somnath, we realise that our strength lies in knowing exactly who we are: a 5000-year-old civilisation with the modern heart of a global leader.

Jai Somnath. Jai Vigyan. Jai Hind.

(The author is a Senior Advisor at CSMVS, Former Director of the National Science Centre and NGMA Mumbai, and Vice Chairman of the National Centre for Science Communicators. Views expressed are personal. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)